The Early History of the NCDXF/IARU Beacons

by John Troster, W6ISQ

Shortly after the formation of the
Northern California DX Foundation (NCDXF) in October 1972, the newly
formed Board of Directors decided that the organization should expand
its horizons to include something of a scientific nature in which
all amateurs, DXers and non-DXers alike, could participate. NCDXF
support for DXpeditions and overseas operations would be a priority
because DXers of the world would be the major contributors to the
Foundation. But we hoped to do more than just send radios and DXpeditions
and print QSL cards.

We consulted our Scientific Advisor, Dr. O.G. "Mike".
Villard, Jr., W6QYT, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford
University and Senior Research Scientist at Stanford Research Institute
(now SRI International). Mike had an idea. He was concerned about
the disappearance of fishing and other boats in Alaskan waters every
year. He believed that if the circulation of the Arctic currents
were better understood, searching rescue ships would have a clearer
idea where to look, thus increasing the chance for finding small
lost boats. To help solve this problem, Mike suggested the possibility
that a floating beacon be dropped into these Alaskan currents. This
could be tracked by amateurs around the world to monitor the drifting
course of the beacons.

Mike had a friend with just such a drifting beacon
which would transmit on 20 meters with 1 watt or 25 watts, and it
was being tested in Washington, D.C. Mike arranged for his friend
to turn on the beacon one Saturday morning, and we organized a listening
group on 20 meters via the Northern California DX Club 2-meter network.
The beacon was easily readable with 25 watts, and pretty good with
just one watt. So even the 1-watt QRP transmission could be monitored
and useful to amateurs some distance away.

There was One Big Problem with the drifting beacons:
their cost of $25,000 each was about 25 times greater than NCDXF
had in the treasury. In addition, the beacons were non-recoverable.
The idea of a beacon remained appealing, however, and with further
thought, the development of a series of relatively low-cost stationary
beacons world-wide appeared possible. It would be much cheaper and
would still work!

We set up a series of brown bag lunch meetings at
SRI to explore possibilities. To do the heavy thinking, we recruited
some of the fellows who had worked on Oscar I-IV: Chuck Towns, K6LFH,
who was president of Project Oscar at the time; Lance Ginner; and
Board Member Jim Maxwell, W6CF, who was always full of imagination
and creative thoughts.

After a month or so of meetings, we agreed it would
be possible to develop a world-wide beacon network. It would feature
all beacons transmitting the same message, each about one minute
in length, all on the same frequency, one after the other, and going
around the world. At Mike’s suggestion, we also planned to step
down the power output of the beacons in 10 dB steps, beginning at
100 watts. The beacon would come on the air with 100 watts, sign
the beacon callsign, then step down to each of four power levels,
100, 10, 1, 0.1 watt, and finally back to 100 watts for the sign-off
call. Each power level would last about 10 seconds before automatically
switching to the next level.

All this planning and daydreaming was just fine,
but who was going to design and build this thing? We turned to Chuck
Towns and he looked deep into the engineering talent of Project
Oscar and came up with an enthusiastic, knowledgeable designer and
builder, Jim Ouimet, K6OPO.

One seemingly small matter had to be addressed now,
but it was potentially the biggest hurdle. We would need an FCC
license! So we wrote a letter to Mr. A. Prose Walker, W4BW, then
Chief of the Amateur Branch of the FCC. We received a prompt answer
from him saying, essentially, he thought this was a good idea. The
plan showed the creative ingenuity that amateurs had used in creating
Oscar-1. It was a program that would be for the benefit and interest
of all amateurs world-wide, and thus of interest to the WARC-79
planners (he expressed this sentiment personally later). He invited
us to join as a member of the WARC-79 group which was beginning
to develop the amateur agenda for that important international conference.
The NCDXF/IARU World-Wide Beacon Network owes its existence to the
early encouragement of Mr. A. Prose Walker.

Attending WARC-79 meetings in Washington offered
the all-important opportunity to discuss with the FCC Amateur Branch
engineers what requirements we would have to meet before submitting
the proper application for an unmanned, automatic beacon on 14 MHz.
One requirement was that we submit a contour map showing the beacon
location, as well as the location of all amateur station operators
in the San Francisco Bay Area who would be monitoring the beacon
24 hours a day. This was a precaution in case the beacon drifted
off frequency, the keying mechanism failed, or anything else went
wrong (the map requirement was the same as for early 2-meter repeaters).
A lot of Northern California DX Club members did not realize they
were now expected to have a receiver on 14.1 MHz day and night,
and listen to it...continuously!

Meanwhile, back in Palo Alto, CA, Jim Ouimet was
busy designing and building the beacon. He became so busy at work
that he had to turn beacon construction over to a colleague. But
the work proceeded and, on bench tests, did exactly what it was
supposed to do.

The license arrived and we were assigned the call
WB6ZNL, not exactly a nice, crisp, short beacon-type call, but it
was a license and we were elated and grateful!

In 1979, the beacon was put in operation from a
trailer on a low hill overlooking the Stanford University campus.
It worked remarkably well, transmitting a one-minute message every
10 minutes for about two years. We received reports from all over
the world telling of its reception. So the beacon was doing what
it was supposed to do.

Now all we needed was to build eight or nine beacons
and distribute them around the world. But there was another problem.
Our beacon transmitter was very complicated to build and, we had
to admit it, a real boat anchor. Also, Jim Ouimet was being sent
world-wide by his company for extended periods. We definitely had
a problem in manufacturing those other beacons.

About this time, Dave Leeson, W6QHS, came on the
Board of Directors of NCDXF. We described the problem to Dave and
he went to work in his lab. He came up with a solution: use a Kenwood
TS-120 as the beacon transmitter and build a black box to control
the entire system. Dave built the control unit and hooked it up
to the TS-120 and, Voila!, we had a beacon transmitter that an amateur
with an average build and strength could lift.

We now needed eight more beacons. Who was going
to build them? Fortunately, the late Cam Pierce, K6RU, another NCDXF
Board Member, took on the project with great enthusiasm. He had
the control circuit boards designed and built, cabinets designed
and made, cables fabricated, and the units tested. He turned on
a real engineering production line.

The new beacons worked beautifully. We put up two
quad loops at right angles, complete with a phasing box, designed
by Mike Stahl, K6MYC, then at KLM Electronics. At about the same
time, we received the call W6WX/B for the beacon. NCDXF had acquired
the call after the untimely death of a well-known local DXer, Dave
Baker, W6WX. That beacon was on the air almost continuously until
1990, when it was stolen from the trailer!

As Cam Pierce was building beacons, we began to
contact potential beacon station operators spaced around the world.
At the United Nations, we talked to Dr. Max de Hensler, HB9RS, "Mr.
U.N. Amateur Radio." Max immediately said yes, he would like
to operate a beacon there. Martti Laine, OH2BH, arranged for a beacon
at the University of Helsinki and also in Madeira. Local DX Club
friend Bruno Bienenfeld, AA6AD, introduced us to an astronomy professor,
Dr. Ahron Slonim, 4X4FQ, at his alma mater, Tel Aviv University.
Kan Mizoguchi, JA1BK, introduced the beacon idea to the JARL. We
also contacted old DX friend ZS6DN for a good location in the Southern
Hemisphere. And at Honolulu City College, we spoke with Professor
Bob Jones, KH6O. Later we received approval from Radio Club Argentina
to put a beacon in Buenos Aires. Here were eight groups ready to
operate a beacon and join W6WX/B at Stanford to complete the first
World-Wide Beacon Network.

These new beacons were unique. Each would transmit
the same one-minute message in sequence one after the other on 14.1
MHz. The message was the same as before: callsign at 100 watts,
then four 9-second dashes at power levels descending from 100 watts
to 10 watts, to 1 watt, to 0.1 watt, then back to 100 watts to sign-off.
This same message has been transmitted on 14.1 MHz by beacons for
almost 14 years.

Beacons were distributed to the operators as they
were completed and tested. They have all been in almost continuous
operation since being put on the air. We have had two thefts, one
at W6WX/B, the other at JA2IGY. Lightning struck a tree which crashed
into the antenna at ZS6DN/B. A hurricane flattened the vertical
at KH6O/B. Once in a great while something did go wrong with the
beacon or power supply, but was repaired locally. But the TS-120s,
in general, were remarkably free of problems. This is a very good
record, considering that they were on the air continuously for between
10 to 12 years each.

The
International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) had been interested in beacons
on a world-wide basis for many years. In 1984, at an IARU Advisory Council
meeting, Alberto Shaio, HK3DEU, then Secretary of Region 2 of IARU, had
an idea. He suggested that a frequency and time-sharing network, as used
in the NCDXF system, would be the best way to present beacons on a world-wide
basis. We talked it over and have been working together ever since.

Somewhat later, it was decided that the network
should be expanded and up-graded to a multiband network. Also, we
had ideas about expanding the number of beacons. But back to the
old problem -- who would do the work?

Quite fortuitously, at a meeting of the Northern
California Contest Club in 1988, this writer met Bob Fabry, N6EK,
retired Professor of Computer Science at the University of California,
Berkeley. Somehow we drifted into a conversation about beacons and
Bob said he would be interested in building rather than programming
for a while. I suggested he talk to Dave Leeson, W6QHS, who designed
the present generation of beacons, and who just happened to be sitting
at the next table. They immediately started drawing pictures on
the table and closely collaborated over many months until Bob had
a prototype. Thus was born the new generation of beacons.

We wanted to shorten the time of each beacon’s transmission
so we could increase the number of beacons without stretching listening
time beyond listener attention span. So, Bob recorded beacon messages
at various speeds, from about 10 to 20 seconds; that is, beacon
call, then four short, power-stepping dashes only. He played the
tape for the Directors of NCDXF, and we voted unanimously that 12
seconds would be about right. The same tape was played for a meeting
of the Executive Committee of IARU Region 2. They agreed that 12-15
seconds was good. However, as a practical matter, Bob used a 10
second transmission for each beacon. This allows six beacons per
minute, or 18 per three minutes, which is the number of beacons
we wished to use.

Originally it was planned to use the Kenwood TS-140
transceiver for the beacon transmitter. However, various technical
factors pointed to the Kenwood TS-50 as the better transmitter to
use. It should be stated that Kenwood Corporation donated 16 of
these transceivers to the International Beacon Project, for which
we are sincerely grateful. Kenwood requested that a plaque be affixed
to each TS-50 that states that the unit is dedicated to the memory
of Jim Rafferty, N6RJ.

Bob constructed a control unit to control the functions
of bandswitching and power stepping the beacon. He also used the
Trimble Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver as a time control
unit to assure accurate functions. Everything’s state-of-the-art
in this new system.

As this new beacon was being crafted, we went to
work with the IARU, with their worldwide associations, to secure
additional beacon locations, principally in the Southern Hemisphere.
As I write this in September 1996, Radio Club of Kenya, Radio Club
Peruano, Radio Club Venezuelano, Radio Amateurs of Canada, New Zealand
Amateur Radio Transmitters, Wireless Institute of Australia, Chinese
Radio Sports Association, and Radio Club of Sri Lanka have accepted
our invitation to join the network. One location is being held for
Central Russia. These additions will bring the total number of beacons
in the network to 18.

Frequencies were chosen for the five new bands after
a survey of several months by Bob Knowles, ZL1BAD, and his worldwide
crew at the IARU Monitoring Service. Frequencies chosen were 14.100,
18.110, 21.150, 24930, and 28.200 MHz. We are quite aware that 14.100
MHz is in the middle of packet station QRM. However, W6WX is limited
to that frequency because of our FCC license. Actually 14.100 has
been designated on the IARU band plan as a guarded frequency for
the beacon network for many years. We are hopeful that packeteers
will give a little up and down to keep 14.100 clear for the network.

Distribution of the new five-band beacons began
in the fall of 1995. As of September 1, 1996, twelve of the 18 systems
have been built and shipped. Six of the units are on the air and
easily copiable. When the entire network is operational, a listener
will be able to hear beacons from all parts of the world on a given
frequency in a three-minute period. Alternatively, the listener
can follow a single beacon through the bands and determine the best
band open to that area.

We are grateful to the Universities, National Societies,
and individuals who have volunteered to operate the beacons in this
expanded network. It will be interesting to monitor the beacons
during the increase in HF band activity as the sunspot cycle passes
through its minimum and begins its climb back to DX glory!

(Reference: The
NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Project, by John Troster, W6ISQ,
and Robert Fabry, N6EK, QST, October and November 1994).

[This material was written by John Troster for the 1997 edition of the
CQ Almanac and is included here with the kind permission of the copyright
holder, CQ Communications, Inc.]